Ralph McCaig had been born over in Dolan Springs, to a father who had worked at the Tennessee Schuylkill Mine and a mother who mostly drank and complained, especially after the old man died in a mining accident and the pension checks never quite made it to the end of the month. Except for a hitch in the army during the Gulf War, in which the closest he had been to action was a street brawl outside a bar in Frankfurt, Germany, he’d always lived in Arizona’s high country, land of canyons and plateaus, evergreen trees, mule deer, and tourists.
On the back bumper of his Chevy pickup, which had been new before that war but old by the time he bought it in 1998, he had a sticker that said, if it’s tourist season, why can’t we shoot ’em? A gun rack over the rear window held a twelve-gauge and a 30.06, and he had actually used the ought-six once to fire at a BMW that whipped around a blind curve at eighty or more, startling him so much as he relieved himself beside the road that he’d peed on his Justin work boots. By the time he zipped up, scrambled to the truck, and yanked down the gun, though, the Beemer had been nothing but a pair of distant taillights, and he didn’t think he came anywhere near hitting it.
Didn’t mean he wouldn’t try again in a similar circumstance. He made his living with a small salvage logging operation, so unlike some of his neighbors, his paycheck didn’t depend on the tourist trade. At the moment, he was between contracts, but that wouldn’t last long. The people who hired him were the ones who had to deal with environmental impact studies and logging permits and all the bureaucratic paperwork; all he had to do when they gave the word was gather a crew and go into the woods and take out the downed trees and the slash, or the skinny striplings that would never gain purchase there. Land managers liked neat, clean forests these days, big trees with plenty of space around them.
Ralph had some money in the bank, the fish were biting at Smoot Lake, and there was enough snow on the ground so he could stick a six-pack in it and every bottle would be as cold as the last, so he was a happy man.
Maybe a little too happy. As he negotiated the turn off the highway onto Lookout Trail—the dirt track that led past his place to a lookout tower that fire spotters hadn’t used for a decade or more—he almost lost control of the truck. The rear end caught an icy patch and fishtailed and he barely got it back in line before it smacked into the stump of an oak he had cut down—illegally, since it wasn’t on his land—because its branches had blocked his view of the highway.
But he did get it under control, and then it was just half a mile to his place. He could do that stretch with his eyes closed.
The close call had put him on edge, shaken a little of the buzz away. That was unfortunate, since the day had been just about perfect so far. He had been thinking, in fact, that the only thing that would make it more perfect would be if Doris Callender came over for dinner—better, with dinner—followed by a little of what his old man had called “knockin’ boots.” He’d give her a ring when he got inside, see if she wasn’t free. Most nights, she was.
By the time Ralph came to a stop outside the old barn he used as a garage, the shakes from his near-accident had faded. It wasn’t that he had been too concerned about crunching the truck, he thought, as much as it was the implication that he’d driven all the way back from Smoot Lake impaired. If six beers threw him off this much, did it mean he was getting old? Forty was closing in fast, after all. If the day came that he couldn’t handle a chain saw or an ax, he really would have to worry.
He left the motor running and climbed down to open the barn door. The night air had turned cold, and he blew on his hands to warm them. He tripped over a root in the driveway but managed to keep his balance. “Jeez,” he said out loud. “Six beers?” Maybe I’m getting sick, he added silently. Catching a cold. Sure, that’s probably it, no way six brews would hit me so hard otherwise.
He had almost reached the barn door, where he knew the rusty hasp would give him problems because it always did, when he heard a strange sound. He froze. The woods around here were full of animals, deer and mountain lions and snakes, rabbits and chipmunks, various birds. Black bears too, sometimes, and at first he thought that’s what had made the noise. He hadn’t had a lot of close encounters with bears, he was glad to say, so he didn’t know for sure if they made sounds like that. It had been a kind of irregular chuffing noise, like something that climbed a steep hill and hadn’t caught its breath yet. But liquid, moist. Hearing it made Ralph envision something with loose, floppy jowls and big teeth and strings of saliva dangling from its open mouth, and he shivered, not because of the cool night air.
The noise came again, louder this time.
Closer.
He tried to gauge his distances. To the barn was closer, but there, he’d have to wrestle with that damn hasp, which gave him fits under the best of circumstances. Once he got it unlatched he would have to tug open the heavy barn door, on hinges he hadn’t greased in he didn’t know how long, then pull it closed behind him. And once he got in there, if it was something like a rabid bear, who knew how long it might wait around outside?
No, the truck was a better bet. Farther away, but if he needed to he could drive into Cedar Wells. And his guns were there.
Again, the noise. This time it was accompanied by something that sounded like smacking lips. Through the trees on the far side of the drive he saw a shape, vague and dark. But big.
Ralph dashed for the truck. Hit the root again, and this time it caught his foot, but good, sprawling him on his belly in the dirt. A shard of glass from a broken bottle sliced open his palm. He rose to a half kneel and yanked the glass out, and blood washed over his hand. At the same moment, a stench enveloped him, as if someone had draped a five-day-dead animal across his nose and mouth.
It had to be the bear, or whatever was out there. If he could smell it, that meant it was even closer. He could feel its hot breath on his neck—or was that his imagination? He didn’t want to turn around and look.
Instead he gained his feet and charged for his truck. His bloody hand grabbed the door handle but slipped off before he could get it open. He clawed at it again, steel tacky with his blood this time, and it came easily, the door swinging open on its hinges.
Then the creature was on him, all thick dark fur and gnashing fangs. It swiped at him with a massive paw, knocking him to the ground. He gripped the truck’s step with his left arm, like it was a life preserver that could hold him above the doom that would otherwise surely swallow him, and now for the first time he really saw it, except he couldn’t be seeing it right because it changed, shifted, phased in and out of visibility—now a black bear, now a bear that had been dead for months, decomposed, bones showing through rotted flesh, now altogether invisible but still, horribly, breathing on his face, fat drops of drool splattering against his chin and neck—and it shoved its muzzle right against his throat, fur tickling his nostrils, the stink gigantic, and its huge razor teeth tore through skin, broke arteries and bones.
Ralph’s last thought was that it would have been good to have knocked boots with old Doris one last time but it was probably for the best that he hadn’t invited her over tonight.
Forty years before, the first victim had been hunting, alone, deep in the forest. He had fallen easily, and his body was never found; animals scattered the bones, the flesh eaten by worms and insects and scavengers and rot and in one form or another returned to the earth.
Forty years had passed since the instant of his death.
The cycle had come around again.
The killings had begun.